India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications

Author(s): J. MOHAN MALIK

Source: Contemporary Southeast Asia , August 1998, Vol. 20, No. 2 (August 1998), pp.
191-215
Published by: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25798420

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Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 20, Number 2, August 1998

India Goes Nuclear: Rationale,

Benefits, Costs and Implications
/. MOHAN MALIK

A whole host of reasons led India to test five nuclear weapons

in May 1998, an action which prompted Pakistan to follow
suit some two weeks later. These series of tests took place at
a time of unprecedented economic turbulence, and political
and strategic flux in Asia. The tests might potentially lead to
the geopolitical map of post-Cold War Asia being redrawn.
This article examines the implications of India's nuclear tests
for the future of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, nuclear
deterrence, Sino-Indian rivalry for power and influence in the
twenty-first century, and the changing balance of power in the
Asia-Pacific region.

There is nothing quite like a big bang to focus minds, shatter prevalent
myths and draw the attention of the whole world. With three big bangs
on the afternoon of 11 May 1998, India ? long suspected of being a
nuclear weapons state ? finally came out of the nuclear closet. Two
days later, New Delhi tested two more nuclear devices, all of which was
to eventually force Pakistan to follow suit. By blasting its way to self
proclaimed status as a nuclear power, India put a question mark over
the widespread view that economic interdependence, globalization in
the information age, and international co-operation will override tradi
tional geopolitical concerns or military rivalries in the post-Cold War
era. The tests challenged the myth that the world could live happily
with the Big Five powers (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and
China) armed to the teeth, while others could not. And they fundamen
tally altered the nuclear balance of power and undermined the global
nuclear non-proliferation regime just when it seemed to be in the
191

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192 /. Mohan Malik

process of consolidation. India's nuclear tests marked an end not only

to ambiguity and uncertainty about India's nuclear posture but also to
a 34-year long debate by India's strategic community (which began
soon after China exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1964) over the pros
and cons of going nuclear. No other nuclear weapons state (NWS) had
ever agonized for as long as India has over whether it should or should
not be a nuclear power. There are two important questions in this
context. Why did India publicly decide to go nuclear? And what are its
implications?

Rationale
There were several reasons behind India's decision to blast its way into
the exclusive nuclear weapons club. Those reasons are rooted in broad
geopolitical issues and extend far beyond the narrow confines of the
Indian subcontinent. Seen from New Delhi's perspective, these consti
tuted compelling reasons for it to acquire nuclear weapons.
The year 1995 marked a turning point in India's policy towards
nuclear weapons. India had all along championed the goal of nuclear
disarmament, as opposed to nuclear non-proliferation. For this reason,
New Delhi refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) on the grounds that it perpetuated a "nuclear apartheid" of haves
and have-nots, with the five haves failing to commit themselves to
disarmament. From India's perspective, the indefinite and uncondi
tional extension of the NPT in 1995, which divided the world perma
nently into the nuclear haves and the have-nots, demonstrated that the
five NWSs ? which also happened to be the five permanent members
(P-5) of the United Nations Security Council ? were unwilling to
negotiate, in good faith, nuclear disarmament. Then came the Compre
hensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996 with its controversial "Entry
Into Force" clause. This clause, inserted primarily at China's insist
ence, was strongly resisted by India, which required New Delhi to sign
the CTBT by September 1999 or face the prospect of UN-imposed trade
sanctions similar to the ones against Iraq. The utility of the CTBT lies
in its ability to permanently freeze the perceived strategic and techno
logical advantages of the NWSs while forever foreclosing the nuclear
option to any other state. The discussions leading up to the CTBT
shattered New Delhi's "misplaced hope in nuclear disarmament" in the
post-Cold War world.1 Wedged between a nuclear-armed China and a
nuclear-capable Pakistan, India defended its right to build nuclear
weapons on national security grounds. The NPT and CTBT were seen
as "instruments of surrender" and "unequal treaties", accession to
which would have amounted to relegating countries like India into the

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 193

ranks of second-grade nations.2 Confronted with the cruel choice of

"use it or lose it" on the long-held nuclear option, India resolved to
break out of the straitjacket stipulations of the CTBT and thereby end
the monopoly of the five NWSs.
Strategically, the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991,
which had provided India with a nuclear security umbrella and a
military counterweight to China, left New Delhi feeling isolated. Dur
ing a recent visit to New Delhi, Samuel Huntington described India as
a "lonely" and "friendless" power. The loosening of the traditional
alliance with Moscow, an uneasy relationship with the sole surviving
superpower, the United States, economic restructuring, China's strate
gic encirclement of India through its military alliances with Pakistan
and Myanmar, concerns about the rise of China as the second most
important economic and military power in the world, and the fear of
marginalization in the post-Cold War era, coupled with an inability to
find a new and sound niche for itself as an effective and acceptable
regional power in the international system, all forced India to rethink
its approach to national security.
Contrary to the common perception of an India-Pakistan nuclear
contest, China was in fact the most important actor to induce India to
exercise its nuclear option. India's nuclear and missile capabilities owe
much to the dynamics of Sino-Indian rivalry. It is the adversarial nature
of the Sino-Indian relationship which has driven the Indian and, in
turn, Pakistani nuclear weapons programmes.3 Uncompromising atti
tudes and deep suspicion of each other's intentions have led to a
situation where each has sought to negotiate only from a position of
absolute strength. Contingent with this distrust have been feelings of
mutual insecurity. India's defence policy has always been based on
"keeping one step ahead of Pakistan and on a par with China". Seeing
China as the reference point of India's economic, security and diplo
matic policies, Indian strategic analysts have long emphasized the need
to keep up militarily with China.4 India's obsession with China is
matched only by Pakistan's obsession with India.
Just as India, having lost the 1962 war with China, considered
nuclear weapons as a practical way to neutralize the superior conven
tional and nuclear strength of a much larger and powerful China,
Pakistan, after the 1971 war with India, considered nuclear weapons as
necessary to neutralize India's strategic advantages, which otherwise
Pakistan could not hope to match despite its heavy defence expendi
tures. China tested its first atomic bomb in 1964, two years after India's
humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war. India conducted its own
nuclear test in 1974. The Chinese, being great believers in balance
of-power, responded by providing nuclear weapons designs and

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194 /. Mohan Malik

technology to India's arch-rival, Pakistan. Similarly, India saw its tech

nological advantages over Pakistan in the development of ballistic
missiles in the 1980s being effectively neutralized by Chinese missile
technology transfers to Pakistan in the 1990s. The acquisition of a
nuclear shield in the late 1980s encouraged Pakistan to wage a con
trolled proxy war in Kashmir and up the ante by describing the Kash
mir dispute as the "core issue" in the India-Pakistan relationship, and
insisting on its resolution on Islamabad's terms. Military build-ups and
support of secessionist elements led to a perpetual game of brinkman
ship, sabre-rattling and war hysteria between the two neighbours. And
in India's case, a seige mentality developed as a result of the decade
long Pakistan-backed insurgency movements, first in the Punjab, and
then in Kashmir and India's northeastern states bordering China and
Myanmar.
Explaining the rationale behind India's resumption of nuclear tests
after a hiatus of twenty-four years, Indian Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee
noted the "deteriorating security environment", and put the onus on
China's nuclear status and the longstanding mistrust and suspicion
between the two countries. He noted that India had:

an overt nuclear weapon state on [its] borders, a state which commit

ted armed aggression against India in 1962 ... To add to the distress
that country has materially helped another neighbour of ours to
become a covert nuclear weapon state. At the hands of this bitter
neighbour we have suffered three aggressions in the last fifty years.5

The Indian nuclear weapons tests were preceded by Indian Defence

Minister George Fernandes' statements calling China a "bigger poten
tial threat" than Pakistan and describing how his country was being
"encircled" by Chinese military activities and alliances with Pakistan
and Myanmar and the deployment of Chinese nuclear missiles in
Tibet.6
The major objective of China's Asia policy has been to prevent the
rise of a peer competitor, a real Asian rival to challenge China's status
as the Asia-Pacific's "Middle Kingdom" (just as the United States has
sought to discourage the rise of a peer competitor at the global level to
challenge its status as a superpower). As an old Chinese saying goes,
"one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers". Beijing has always
known that India, if it ever gets its economic and strategic act together,
alone has the size, might, numbers and, above all, the intention to
match China. In the meantime, perceiving India as weak, indecisive
and on the verge of collapse, all that was needed, from Beijing's per
spective, was to keep New Delhi under pressure by arming its neigh
bours and supporting insurgency movements in India's minority

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 195

regions. That is why over the years, Beijing has pursued a policy of
containment of India and encirclement by proxy. All of India's neigh
bours have obtained much of their military arsenal from China ?
90 per cent of China's arms sales go to countries that border India. On
the Indian subcontinent, China has never played a peace-maker's role.
Since the 1962 Sino-Indian War, China has built up Pakistan as a
military counterweight to India so as to tie India down south of the
Himalayas. India, on its part, has always perceived the Sino-Pakistani
military nexus as "hostile" and "threatening" in both intent and char
acter. Despite Chinese efforts to justify military links with Pakistan as
part of "normal state-to-state relations", India has remained uncon
vinced. Just as the Chinese had made an end to Moscow's military
alliances with Mongolia, Vietnam and Afghanistan a pre-condition for
normalization of Sino-Soviet relations in the 1980s, the Indians have
demanded an end to China's arming of India's neighbours.
What has irked India most is the Chinese transfer of nuclear and
missile technology to Pakistan. However, New Delhi's repeated pro
tests to Beijing have fallen on deaf ears.7 China helped Pakistan to
acquire a nuclear and missile capability by providing it with, among
other tilings, a tested design of a nuclear warhead, M-9 and M-ll
ballistic missiles and missile components, fissile material, nuclear plants,
and ring magnets for enriching weapons grade uranium. All this was in
contravention of pledges, rules and non-proliferation pacts to which
China was a party. This led to the imposition of U.S. sanctions against
China in 1991 and 1993. Even the decade-long Sino-Indian rapproche
ment belied hopes that improved ties between New Delhi and Beijing
would lead to more circumspect Chinese behaviour in this respect. In
fact, Beijing stepped up its nuclear and missile transfers to Pakistan as
a bargaining chip in its attempts to curb U.S. arms transfers to Taiwan,
thus displaying a complete disregard for Indian security concerns. It is
not surprising that Sino-Indian dialogue in recent years has seen the
issue of nuclear/missile assistance to Pakistan overshadow the thorny
territorial dispute between India and China. It became obvious that
China was not going to become less friendly to Pakistan after normali
zation of relations with India primarily because the combined strategic
and political advantages that China could receive from its relationship
with Pakistan (and, through Pakistan, other Islamic countries) easily
outweigh any advantages China might accrue from a closer relationship
with India. Above all, Pakistan is the only country that stands up to
India and thereby prevents Indian hegemony over the region, thus
fulfilling a key strategic objective of China's South Asian policy.
In addition to Pakistan, China has transferred nuclear and missile
technology to other Islamic nations, particularly Iran, Iraq and Saudi

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196 /. Mohan Malik

Arabia, both as a way to divert and constrain U.S. power and to develop
closer ties with sources of energy supply vital to China's economic
growth. From China's perspective, the emergence of additional power
centres far from its borders (for example, Iran in the Middle East) will
provide a valuable U.S. hostage and preoccupy the United States,
leaving South Asia and Southeast Asia to be dominated by China's
growing might.8
In Southeast Asia, China has taken advantage of Myanmar's isola
tion since 1990 to satisfy its own great power ambitions, especially its
desire to counter India in the Indian Ocean, and to ensure control of
vital sea lanes, by drawing Myanmar into its sphere of influence. A
major hurdle in the Chinese ambitions to dominate the Malacca Strait
and to ensure the safe passage of commerce through the vital sea lanes
was the lack of any bases in and around the Indian Ocean for Chinese
naval ships. With Myanmar offering its port facilities for repair and
maintenance, a key strategic objective ? that is, an opening to the Bay
of Bengal/Andaman Sea via China's southwest frontier ? has now been
realized. In addition to Myanmar, the Chinese are hopeful of securing
permission from Pakistan and Iran to establish naval bases in the
Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.9 China has provided military aid of
US$2 billion to Myanmar's military regime and has established elec
tronic listening posts on Myanmar's Coco Islands opposite India's
Andaman and Nicobar Islands to monitor Indian naval activity and
missile testing. From Beijing's perspective, China's strategic alliances
with Pakistan in the southwest, and Myanmar in the southeast consti
tute the linchpin of China's grand strategy for the twenty-first century.
Allies, such as Pakistan and Myanmar, will play an important role in
'fulfilling China's ambitions of regional supremacy and in thwarting the
ambitions of China's rival powers. Chinese strategists see India, which
has its own great power ambitions, "as the main party [which is going
to be] affected by China's naval surges into the Indian Ocean in the next
century".10 Given India's long adversarial relationship with China, any
thing that promotes China's interests in its immediate neighbourhood
or expands China's influence worries Indian policy-makers.
Meanwhile in Tibet, Chinese troops have increased in number
from 100,000 to 400,000, and airfield runways are being extended to
handle Chinese Su-27 fighters, newly acquired from Russia, which
have the potential to erode India's air superiority in the region. While
quickly resolving China's territorial disputes with Russia and the newly
independent Central Asian states, Beijing has shown little, if any,
interest in resolving the Sino-Indian territorial dispute, ostensibly to
keep India under pressure. China also refuses to hold talks with the

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 197

Dalai Lama on granting real autonomy to Tibet, as promised in the

1950s.
Furthermore, China's own military modernization programme has
been in full swing. That programme has included the acquisition of
modern fighters, submarines, destroyers, sophisticated air defence
missiles, in-flight refuelling, airborne early-warning control aircraft
(AWACs), advanced fuel technology for nuclear missiles, and more
sophisticated satellite navigation technology.11 Much to India's cha
grin, China's arms build-up has been assisted by cheap arms sales from
New Delhi's former ally, Moscow. It was China's emphasis on mini
aturized, multiple nuclear warheads, tactical nuclear weapons and the
development of a blue-water navy, with ballistic missile submarines
(SSBNs), that New Delhi found unsettling. It meant that the military
gap between China and India had been widened.
All these developments were noted with concern by the Indian
defence community, which concluded that a strong and prosperous
China would cast an ominous shadow over India. A commonly ex
pressed fear is that over the very long term, with the balance of power
on the Sino-Indian border shifting back in China's favour, India would
be faced with a situation in which New Delhi would be required to
negotiate from a position of weakness, and that India would not be
taken seriously if it was not seen as a militarily powerful nation.
Critics of India's China policy point out that the last ten years of
Sino-Indian rapprochement (1988-98) have failed to alleviate India's
security concerns. Of particular concern to New Delhi is the challenge
that China's growing economic and military power might pose to
India's own aspirations for regional leadership. New Delhi, for its part,
has responded by establishing closer ties with China's neighbours in
Indochina, Vietnam and Laos, and those ASEAN member-states which
share India's perception of "the China threat".
Given the fact that there are genuine tensions between the world's
reigning superpower, the United States, and the world's rising super
power, China, which will not go away, India has been looking towards
moving closer to the United States. The significant improvement in
Indo-U.S. relations following the end of the Cold War has led some
Indian observers to conclude that changing strategic realities ? China's
increasing assertiveness and its tendency to flex its muscles in the
South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait ? would encourage Washing
ton to look for an alternative Asian power to contain Chinese influence.
In return, New Delhi wants U.S. economic and military help in gaining
and maintaining pre-eminence in the region as a counterweight to
China. For its part, Beijing fears the possibility of a strategic collusion

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198 /. Mohan Malik

between India and the United States. In that respect, Chinese analysts
have pointed to growing naval co-operation between the United States
and India, as well as the Indian nuclear and naval programmes.12
However, the road to Indo-U.S. rapprochement was littered with non
proliferation and geopolitical hurdles. The United States wanted India
as a counterweight to China but not as a nuclear power. But India saw
its nuclear and missile capability as an integral component of its China
policy, and the only means to keep Beijing's ambitions in check. Nor
was the United States going to abandon its long-term ally, Pakistan,
which could serve as a conduit for expanding its influence into Central
Asia.
Moreover, from 1995 onwards, the Clinton Administration not
only chose to acquiesce in the Sino-Pakistan nuclear and missile co
operation, but stepped in to actually approve the first export of satellite
and advanced nuclear technology to China after obtaining assurances
that Beijing would limit its arms exports to Iran (but not Pakistan).13
Throughout the 1980s, the strategic compulsions of the United States
(the emergence of Pakistan as the "frontline state" in the fight against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan) had made successive U.S. ad
ministrations turn a blind eye to Chinese missile and nuclear transfers
to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The 1990s saw trade and other
economic considerations overtaking U.S. non-proliferation concerns.
While China was being rewarded for its proliferation activities, India
was being punished for exercising restraint. Indians point out that
unlike China, India has never exported nuclear and missile technology
despite multibillion-dollar offers from Saddam Hussein and Muammar
Gaddafi. (Here, India could be making a virtue of necessity because any
rnuclear technology transfers to Iraq or Libya would have eventually
found its way to Pakistan.) By aiding China's military modernization,
the Clinton Administration was heightening the paranoia of India,
which feared that the U.S. nuclear and missile technology that went to
China would eventually seep into Pakistan. Half-hearted protests by
Washington against the transfer of such technology from China to
Pakistan did nothing to assuage New Delhi's sense of vulnerability and
insecurity. India was convinced that its insecurity had been ignored in
Washington and other world capitals primarily because most Western
governments were busy taking advantage of the commercial opportuni
ties in the vast China market.
Equally disturbing, from India's point of view, were signs showing
that far from balancing China, the United States had been drawing it
into a close embrace, seemingly oblivious to the implications for
regional security. Since 1995, Clinton Administration officials had
been asking China to take a greater interest in South Asia, virtually

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 199

conceding South Asia as China's "sphere of interest".14 Taken together,

this and the talk of a U.S.-China strategic partnership set off alarm
bells in India. Neither an all-out Sino-U.S. cold war nor a Sino-U.S.
condominium in Asia was seen as in India's security interests.15 The
fear of the re-emergence of bipolarity ? this time a shared Sino-U.S.
dominance of the Asia-Pacific ? was discomforting. As one observer
put it: "If the U.S. and China draw too close as a result of Washington's
'China first' policy, it could put many Asian countries in the uncom
fortable position of having to accept Chinese hegemony".16 Indeed,
Charles Krauthammer said: "There is nothing quite like a US-China
strategic partnership to put the fear of God in India".17 Confronted with
the prospect of a Sino-U.S. condominium (albeit, still in its embryonic
stage), New Delhi had two options: either foreswear nuclear weapons
for good in return for the protection of the U.S. extended nuclear
deterrence, much like Japan and Australia, or exercise its nuclear
option. Given India's preference for an independent foreign policy and
historic distrust of military alliances, the second option seemed to be
the only logical one. India's nuclear capability is thus aimed at restor
ing a stable balance-of-power in order to prevent China from assuming
a policing role in South and Southeast Asia. The point is that the state
of Sino-U.S. relations has always impacted upon India's security pos
ture. Just as President Richard Nixon's courting of Mao Zedong's China
in 1971 pushed non-aligned India firmly into the Soviet embrace,
leading to the signing of the Indo-Soviet security pact, President Clinton's
courting of Jiang Zemin's China has encouraged India to conclude that
the most effective way to ensure that its interests are protected from an
increasingly powerful neighbour is to demonstrate to the world that
India has a nuclear deterrent capability. India's nuclear tests are, there
fore, rooted in the broader geopolitical power game and a clear state
ment that post-Cold War Asia cannot be disposed of as the United
States or China might wish.
In a nutshell, India saw China aiding Pakistan, militarizing Tibet
while steadily improving its own nuclear arsenal and cementing ties to
the military regime in Myanmar ? in effect encircling India ? while at
the same time being courted by the United States. It was supposedly
this "deteriorating security environment" that Prime Minister Vajpayee*
spoke of. Thus, the China factor is central to the nuclear equation in
South Asia, for India sees China as the mother of all its security
concerns, from the Bay of Bengal to the Persian Gulf. Pakistan has
always been a sideshow. Reluctantly, India agreed to live with one
nuclear power on its borders for three decades but found it increasingly
hard to live with two closely aligned, hostile nuclear powers which
claim vast tracts of Indian territory. There is reason to believe that if

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200 /. Mohan Malik

China had not provided nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and
if the non-proliferation regime had not tried to foreclose India's nuclear
option, India would have maintained its "bombs-in-the-basement" pos
ture. However, China was unwilling to concede "strategic space" to
India as a regional power. Or rather, as cynics say, "China was deter
mined to fight India to the last Pakistani". No other Asian country has
krmed another in such a consistent manner over such a long period of
time as China has armed Pakistan. Beijing knows only too well that a
secure and stable Pakistan at peace with India will make New Delhi
focus on China. In one sense, nuclear tests can be interpreted as at
tempts by New Delhi to break out of the "Made in China" strategic
straitjacket put on India in the form of Beijing's encirclement strategy.
India remains the only Asian country which is determined to resist
China's dominance of Asia by developing the full spectrum of eco
nomic and military capabilities. Initially, India's nuclear weapons were
aimed more at deterring China, not Pakistan. India did not need nuclear
weapons to counter Pakistan as it enjoyed a two-to-one superiority in
conventional military forces. There is an element of,truth in New
Delhi's claims that the nuclear arms race on the subcontinent was
started and fuelled by China through its nuclear and technology
transfers to Pakistan which, in turn, showed the failure of the non
proliferation regime. The timing of the Indian tests may have come as
a surprise but not the strategic rationale underlying them.
Since the early 1990s, India's scientific and strategic community
had also been voicing concern over the credibility and reliability of
India's nuclear arsenal based on a single test of a crude nuclear device
in 1974. While Pakistan was in possession of tested Chinese nuclear
warheads and missiles, Indian scientists were not absolutely certain of
whether they had usable and reliable nuclear weapons which would
form the basis of a stable nuclear deterrence. Moreover, the five NWSs
had gone in for smaller, and hence more usable nuclear weapons
because advances in nuclear and missile technology afforded the op
portunity to use such weapons in regional conflicts without causing
collateral damage. Making small nuclear weapons necessitates testing.
Not only that, a nuclear deterrence capability is seen as a technological
bridge to frontier science and technology of the twenty-first century, for
instance, lasers. It is also allied to fusion technology. Some of the smart
weapons systems of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) will be
based on the mastery of nuclear technology. Add to this New Delhi's
concern over the impact of the Western powers' lead in the RMA or
information warfare, and the widening gap between their defence cap
abilities and those of middle-ranking powers like India. It was against

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 201

this backdrop that India's scientific community felt the need to carry
out the nuclear tests to remove any doubts about India's capability to
build nuclear weapons, and the option to miniaturize them.18
In addition, India's elite has long nursed a sense of grievance over
the lack of respect accorded to India in view of its civilizational and
cultural attributes, its population, and its potential, let alone its domi
nant position in South Asia. The nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) wants India to be a nuclear, space and information technology
(IT) power. The nuclear ambition, in particular, has always been part of
the BJP's philosophy of negotiating with the outside world from a
position of strength. Believing that it was a lack of advanced military
technology by Asian powers like India, which led to their colonization
by European powers, nuclear weapons are seen as a currency of power
by the military establishment, which had been urging successive gov
ernments to cross the threshold from the very day China did its first
test. The nuclear tests also mark an assertion of India's objections and
opposition to the current U.S.-led management of global affairs through
the P-5 and G-7 (Group of Seven industrialized countries) which ex
cludes the world's largest democracy and pays little or no attention to
shifts in world power relationships and to the reality of changes in the
balance-of-power.
An unstated reason behind India's nuclear ambivalence had been
the belief that the possession of nuclear weapons by "white" nations
implied their racial and technological superiority which could not go
unchallenged. From India's perspective, its nuclear tests have served
notice on the international community that the post-World War II, U.S.
led, European-dominated power structure does not truly reflect the
diffusion of power in the international system. A related reason, of
course, was that the inherent instability of the BJP-led coalition, and
the popular support generated by the tests was supposed to grant the
government a new lease of life.

Benefits
Few Indian commentators have taken the threat of economic sanctions
seriously. Many believe that over the long term, India will be embraced
by the West just as China was in 1971 by President Nixon on the
grounds that a nation of 800 million armed with nuclear weapons
cannot be ignored. India now hopes to be consulted by the major
powers on Asian security issues. As one analyst put it: "India is unwill
ing to be treated as a piece of furniture in the building designed by the
Chinese and the Americans in Asia. Instead, it wants to be the architect

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202 /. Mohan Malik

of the Asian security structure".19 An analysis of the Indian media and

official statements and commentaries by opinion-makers points to
several perceived benefits.
First, India's nuclear tests have blasted open the closed doors of
the exclusive nuclear club and broken the link between the possession
of nuclear weapons and permanent membership of the U.N. Security
Council. There was great jubilation over demolishing the myth that the
world could live happily with the Big Five countries armed to the teeth
for ever, while others could not. India's nuclear tests are projected as
resulting in an end to perceived "nuclear apartheid", an unequivocal
rejection of unequal non-proliferation treaties, and giving a voice to the
world's silent majority's angst over the iniquitous world order.
Secondly, by openly going nuclear, India has announced its arrival
as an independent power, demonstrated its technological sophistica
tion, drawn attention to the destabilizing consequences of the evolving
"strategic partnership" between China and the United States, and dem
onstrated its centrality to the nuclear balance of power and nuclear
arms control process.
Thirdly, India claims to have corrected the asymmetry in the
power relationship with China and restored the strategic balance of
power in the Asia-Pacific which had tilted in China's favour following
the withdrawal of the former Soviet Union from the Asian region. In the
face of the perceived Chinese threat, India believes it is now free to take
both nuclear and conventional counter-measures. Like many countries,
China is seen as having underestimated both India's nuclear techno
logical capability and determination to match China. India now prob
ably has enough data from its nuclear tests to be on par with the Big
Five, and would be able to carry out computer simulations of nuclear
devices of varying sizes. The testing of sub-kiloton devices has demon
strated India's capability to miniaturize nuclear bombs for a ground-,
sea-, and air-based nuclear triad. Pakistan may have matched India's
nuclear tests numerically but it will not be able to compete technologi
cally. A nuclear India is offering itself as an economic and military
counterweight to China in the Asia-Pacific. Most Indian strategic
analysts believe that in the long-term, the West's concern about the
growing clout of China will lead it to conclude that a nuclear-armed,
democratic India might well be a useful counterweight to China.20
Fourthly, Pakistan's nuclear tests are seen as a vindication of what
India had been saying all along ? that in order to keep India pegged to
a face-off with the Pakistani military machine, the Chinese have been
busy arming Pakistan. Pakistan alone could not have built nuclear
weapons and made preparations for the tests within two weeks of the
Indian tests (which had required a month-long preparation). Obvi

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 203

ously, Islamabad was all along sitting on its nuclear weapons which
had originated from China. That is why soon after carrying out its
nuclear tests, the Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, thanked
China for its help and contribution. China is now perceived by many as
the country that aggravated the nuclear arms race in the subcontinent.
From India's perspective, Pakistan's nuclear tests have exposed the
extent of the Sino-Pakistani nuclear nexus, which also demonstrated
the ineffectiveness of the flawed global nuclear non-proliferation re
gime. Henceforth, the world might find it difficult to sweep under the
carpet China's proliferation activities vis-a-vis Pakistan. In a sense, long
before Samuel Huntington came up with his thesis about "the nexus
between Islamic and Confucian civilisations" in 1993, India had long
lived with such a nexus ? for thirty years, to be precise. New Delhi
may now also have reason to assume the worst about Beijing's evolving
military relationship with another neighbour, Myanmar.
Fifthly, nuclear tests are seen as strengthening the Sino-Indian and
India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence, thus ruling out the possibility of the
outbreak of a war by miscalculation. Indian strategists argue that it is
much better for India to face an open Pakistani nuclear weapon ? as it
does the Chinese one ? instead of an undeclared weapon. In other
words, explicit deterrence is seen as more stable than implicit deter
rence. Nuclear deterrence can lead to peace, prevent conventional wars
and bring warring parties to the negotiating table. Besides, Pakistan's
overt nuclear status is said to have now deprived Islamabad of a
powerful bargaining chip which its covert nuclear capability had long
provided Pakistan in its bilateral relations with the United States (and
India).
Sixthly, New Delhi believes its nuclear tests have enhanced its
security through the rejection of external constraints on the growth of
India's military power and put an end to nuclear coercion and black
mail by the five NWSs once and for all. As one Indian saying goes, "true
friendship can exist only among equals". New Delhi now hopes to
establish relationships based on "mutual and equal security" with the
NWSs.
Seventhly, nuclear weapons are seen as cost-effective compared
with state-of-the-art expensive conventional weaponry. A stockpile of
150-200 20kt warheads and their delivery systems is expected to cost
about US$25 billion over ten years. This will not make India 'eat grass'
for its national security. Fears of an India-Pakistan arms race are, it
is claimed, exaggerated to an extent. Since Pakistan already spends
6 to 8 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence (com
pared with 3 per cent by India), it cannot afford to raise this further
without wrecking its economy. At any rate, economic strength and

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204 /. Mohan Malik

technological sophistication will determine the nature of the arms race

and nuclear deterrence. India's goal is to achieve a minimum deter
rence against China and Pakistan, not parity.
Finally, India's nuclear tests not only mark an end to ambiguity
and uncertainty about India's nuclear posture but could also pave the
way for meaningful, substantive arms control and confidence building
'measures between China and India, on the one hand, and India and
Pakistan, on the other. The politics of disarmament is such that people
pay attention only when you are armed and you are willing to give up
those arms. India also hopes to be seriously consulted on all future
nuclear arms control negotiations instead of being dismissed as irrel
evant and a nuisance to the process. New Delhi even claims that its
tests will promote the campaign for global nuclear disarmament by
showing the Big Five that the status quo is untenable: either they
should abandon their reliance on nuclear deterrence by honouring
their commitment to disarmament in the same manner as the world got
rid of biological and chemical weapons in a non-discriminatory man
ner or face the prospect of living in a world of increasing nuclear-armed
states.

Costs
Whether the above-mentioned policy gains materialize or not, only
time will tell. In the immediate future, however, India is faced with
several adverse consequences of its tests, and the country will have to
brace itself for a very difficult period ahead. On the diplomatic front,
the BJP government committed a series of diplomatic gaffes and its
handling of the tests fallout was clumsy. India's nuclear tests destroyed
a steadily improving relationship with China and inflamed tensions
with Pakistan which will entail significant costs for a long time to
come.

One of those costs is the strengthening of the China-Pak

after years of efforts to draw China away and make Beijing
bilateral negotiations route to the resolution of the Kashm
Although India had used China in the past to deal with
pressure on the nuclear issue, it had done so covertly. This was
time the Indian Government had played "the China card" o
thereby upset the fragile balance in Sino-Indian relations a
successive governments over the past ten years. Deterioratio
Indian relations was marked by a lively exchange of inve
innuendo (the Indians quoted back to the Chinese the latter'
tion for their own series of nuclear tests, and the Chinese resp
calling the Indians hegemonists and hypocrites). The People

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 205

tion Army daily, Jiefangjun Bao (19 May 1998), accused India of adopt
ing an "offensive" strategic posture and said that its goal was to "domi
nate South Asia, contain China, control the Indian Ocean and become
a major military power". China's powerful military will now use In
dia's declared nuclear capability as a justification for supplying further
nuclear equipment and expertise to Pakistan. As the Far Eastern Eco
nomic Review pointed out: "Having provided Islamabad with the
necessary expertise and many of the components for its nuclear bomb,
Beijing will feel intense pressure to ensure that its ally does not fall
behind New Delhi in moving a modern arsenal from the basement to
the parlour."21 China has already assured Pakistan that bilateral mili
tary ties would remain close and has resumed diplomatic support for
Pakistan's stand on Kashmir. India Today quoted a senior Chinese
official as saying that: "From mutual confidence we have now moved to
mutual apprehension."22 Asiaweek (29 May 1998) reported that an
opinion poll conducted in China revealed that 76 per cent of the
respondents feared that the Indian tests posed a direct threat to China.
With China throwing its lot behind U.S. efforts to roll-back India's
nuclear capability, Sino-Indian relations are in for a bumpy ride. Even
before India's tests, decades of deep-seated suspicion between the two
Asian giants was in part to blame for their largely cosmetic ties.
The second cost that India has to bear is international pressure for
a quick settlement of the Kashmir issue ? a prospect that India had
always wanted to avoid. The P-5, especially the United States, have
tilted towards the Pakistani view that there can never be peace and
stability on the subcontinent unless the Kashmir problem is resolved.
For the first time in three decades, the Kashmir issue is back on the
U.N. Security Council agenda. As an anti-status quo state in its territo
rial dispute with India, Pakistan may be tempted to change the equilib
rium through the use of force unless the issue of Kashmir is resolved to
its satisfaction.
India's nuclear testing and sanctions that followed also put an end
to whatever hopes existed in Washington of a new beginning with New
Delhi. A chill has descended on Indo-U.S. relations which are unlikely
to improve under the Clinton Administration. India's nuclear tests
came just when the United States was moving towards a broader and1
more rounded relationship with India by expanding trade and strategic
ties. India's tests represented a significant setback for the Clinton
Administration's non-proliferation policies. Already, the talk of an
Indo-U.S. strategic partnership has given way to a Sino-U.S. strategic
partnership. Much to India's chagrin, China is now viewed as a mature
and responsible nuclear power while India is perceived as a rogue
state.23 Only two years ago, Beijing stood accused of undermining

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206 /. Mohan Malik

support for a nuclear-test-free world by detonating nuclear bombs,

selling M-ll missiles and uranium-enrichment ring magnets to Paki
stan, firing missiles in the Taiwan Strait, and refusing to sign the
Chemical Weapons Convention. Beijing is poised to benefit diplomati
cally from the international ire over India's nuclear tests by portraying
itself to be in the vanguard of efforts to stem nuclear proliferation,
fchina's criticism of India's nuclear tests, which contained some of the
strongest language since the 1962 war, has opened the door for greater
political co-operation between the United States and China in the
management of South Asian affairs and greater access by China to U.S.
high technology. A Sino-U.S. understanding on South Asia formalized
during the Clinton-Jiang summit in Beijing in June 1998 reveals that
China has taken its gloves off as far as India is concerned.24 By aligning
with the United States, China believes "it could nip in the bud any
Indian hopes of emerging as a challenger over the long term to China's
primacy in Asia". For Washington, "Beijing's new stance on non
proliferation is a welcome sign of strong Chinese endorsement of the
current global nuclear order and the expression of the political will to
punish nations like India who gate-crash into the exclusive nuclear
club."25 Thus, with one stroke, the nuclear tests have not only wors
ened India's relations with the United States, China and Pakistan, but
they may also have realized India's worst nightmare: not merely a
strengthened China-Pakistan nexus but also a U.S.-China-Pakistan
axis.
On the economic front, India may have underestimated the con
sequences of its nuclear blasts. The World Bank has delayed considera
tion of several major loans to India, disrupting plans for a range of key
infrastructure projects. The international credit rating agencies have
downgraded India's rating from stable to negative. Indian stock markets
have nearly crashed while the rupee has fallen to a record low against
the U.S. dollar. India's goal of 8 to 10 per cent economic growth,
essential to catching up with China, is unlikely to be realized. A
nationalist and unstable India will be seen as a less safe bet by foreign
investors.
Furthermore, new hurdles will be erected as India still has a long
way to go before acquiring a credible and operational nuclear deterrent.
The aim of international pressure is to freeze India's nuclear capability
at a point short of weaponization and deployment. In other words,
having exercised the nuclear option, India will have to fight hard to
retain it. It will have to prepare for a sustained campaign of demorali
zation and destabilization at home, and isolation abroad. For example,
Pakistan has been trying to drive a wedge between India and the

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 207

Middle East by repeatedly talking of an India-Israel axis. China and

Pakistan are also likely to step up their support for insurgency move
ments in India's minority regions, particularly in Kashmir. Explicit
deterrence does nothing to contain covert war or low intensity conflict
? the preferred tactic between hostile nuclear-armed neighbours.
To many countries, long used to thinking of India as a plucky
democracy, India's nuclear tests came as a great shock. India's image as
a "soft state", a benign democracy ? slow to action and anger ? has
taken a beating. That image is being replaced by an India that is
hawkish and ultra-nationalist, led by a government capable of taking
profound decisions in defiance of international opinion. "What is emerg
ing is a more self-centred India that is single-minded in its pursuit of
national interests, rather than on abstract universal goals", said one
observer quoted in India Today.26 As a result of the diplomatic fallout^
India may as well give up any hope of getting a permanent seat on the
U.N. Security Council.
And last but not least, there are fears of a new three-cornered
nuclear arms race in Asia to build more sophisticated nuclear weapons
and their delivery systems, which could erupt in a nuclear war. Al
though nuclear capabilities are generally seen as a means of discourag
ing escalation and promoting strategic deterrence in regional conflicts,
the fact is that deterrence, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.
Sudden, unexpected nuclear crises could erupt between China and
India, and India and Pakistan. Potential blackmail at great distances
appear on the horizon. Nor can one rule out the possibility of nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of separatists or of religious fanatics, or
the possibility of a civil war fought with nuclear weapons either in
China or in the Indian subcontinent. It is not difficult to think of a
scenario in which Kashmiri separatists armed with a couple of nuclear
weapons provided by disgruntled Pakistani army officers threaten to
explode those weapons in New Delhi if Indian security forces are not
withdrawn, and set off one such weapon in the Himalayas for demon
stration effect. In conditions of civil war and internal chaos, nuclear
weapons could conceivably be used as bargaining chips in a struggle
for internal power, or as negotiating leverage with external powers.

Implications
Nuclear tests in the Indian subcontinent, which took place at a time of
unprecedented turbulence in economic, political and strategic spheres
in Asia, have the potential to redraw the map of post-Cold War Asia.
Their reverberations will be felt for decades to come.

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208 /. Mohan Malik

Non-proliferation Regime and Nuclear Arms Control

By exploding ten nuclear weapons in a fortnight, India and Pakistan
together have blown apart the nuclear non-proliferation regime and
have threatened the whole basis of Western security crafted during the
last four decades. Although in strict legal terms, India (and Pakistan)
did not violate any international treaty nor did it break any promise,
the fact remains that the explosions in South Asia have demonstrated
that nuclear might represents, as Samuel Huntington foresaw in
The Clash of Civilisations, "the central phenomenon of the slow but
ineluctable diffusion of power in a multicivilisational world". Nuclear
weapons have not lost their value as a power instrument. The campaign
for nuclear disarmament is failing just when success seemed at hand.
Regardless of the legal quibbling over the terms and definitions of
the NPT, the fact of the matter is that India and Pakistan are now
nuclear-weapons states. No sanctions and sermons can undo this de
velopment. It is also obvious that imposing economic and military
sanctions seems to make no difference to a country determined to
develop a nuclear capability. The public posturing of the five NWSs
notwithstanding, they cannot for long pretend as if nothing has hap
pened. They will be forced to rethink their approach to non-prolifera
tion and disarmament. The fact that tests of low-yield sub-kiloton
devices were undetected by the present world-wide surveillance
network shows the holes in the non-proliferation regime. A Nuclear
Weapons Convention based on the Chemical Weapons Convention and
Biological Weapons Convention could be one way out of the imbroglio.
But the harsh reality is that none of the P-5 members of the U.N.
Security Council are contemplating totally dismantling their nuclear
weapons. Most likely, the P-5 will receive wide support for treating the
India-Pakistan tests as a regional phenomenon (on the grounds that
South Asia has long been a nuclear-weapons region) and for keeping
the non-proliferation regimes unchanged.
In the meantime, the danger is that in its defiance of global non
proliferation norms, India will prompt others to follow suit. The domino
theory has it that nuclear proliferation in South Asia opens the pos
sibility of similar developments in other areas of regional tension, the
Middle East (Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq) and Northeast Asia (North
Korea, Japan and Taiwan). In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is seeking nu
clear and missile technology from India. Nonetheless, in each case a
cost-benefit calculus is likely to be more important than the Indian
example. The biggest worry is that a bankrupt Pakistan may be tempted
to share its nuclear-weapons technology with other Islamic states, in
exchange for financial aid, or it might step up trafficking in illicit
drugs.27 For this reason alone, sanctions notwithstanding, the United

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 209

States and its Western allies would not let Pakistan go under. They now
need a stable Pakistan more than Pakistan needs them.
The new nuclear arms race not only exposes the impotence of
American foreign policy but also calls into question the nature and
durability of U.S. leadership in world affairs. From North Korea to Iran,
the U.S. writ on non-proliferation does not seem to work. And that
region is home to more than half of the world's population. Evidence
suggests that a combination of three factors ? the Clinton Administra
tion's "China first" policy, the tendency to deliberately ignore the
dangerous liaisons between Beijing and Islamabad, and an inflexible
"one size fits all" approach to non-proliferation, as demonstrated in
the CTBT negotiations which cornered India, could have acted as a
trigger.28
The U.N. Security Council and G-8 resolutions calling for an end
to India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons programmes will lead no
where because they do not address the underlying cause of nuclear
proliferation ? the China-India rivalry. Pakistan's existentialist fear of
India, and India's security concerns regarding China, coupled with its
desire to be ranked strategically with China, make it unlikely that either
will ever renounce nuclear weapons. The key to peace in the subconti
nent lies in Beijing, not in New Delhi or Islamabad.
On the positive side, however, much like China before it, India is
now likely to focus more on nuclear arms control and nuclear confi
dence and security building measures (CSBMs) and balance of power,
rather than on nuclear disarmament and multilateralism. India and
Pakistan have announced a moratorium, with India offering to convert
its moratorium into a formal obligation. China and India, and India and
Pakistan need to put in place CSBMs such as the no-first-use (NFU) of
nuclear weapons against each other and effective command and control
systems in order to reduce the risk of war by miscalculation. However,
since India does not believe in the NFU pledge given by China, there is
even less reason to expect Pakistan to believe in India's own pledge.

Nuclear Deterrence
The Cold War may be over in the global system but not in the regional
system. By the year 2025, several states will have acquired formidable
power-projection capabilities, with weapons of increasing range, accu
racy, and destructiveness for the conduct of high-intensity conflict.
Anns control and non-proliferation regimes slow down but cannot
prevent the proliferation of the technological means of war. The
overarching dominance of the United States, coupled with the growing
military gap (driven by the revolution in military affairs [RMA]) be
tween the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and major

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210 /. Mohan Malik

developing countries, on the other hand, may have increased the utility
and relevance of nuclear weapons ? as a strategic equalizer ? for
middle-rank powers. The world is thus moving towards a multiple
nuclear balance-of-power. Nuclear weapons are seen as discouraging
escalation in regional conflicts. If managed properly, the nuclear bal
ance between India and China, and India and Pakistan will contribute
'to stability and avoidance of large-scale wars. Nuclear wars cannot be
won and should never be fought. Avoidance of war, therefore, should
be the primary objective of countries concerned. At the same time, the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will give a boost to the
development of ground- and space-based ballistic missile defences
(BMD). A proposed missile defence system is already being debated in
the U.S. Congress.

India's Rise as a Major Power

Since the end of the Cold War, India has been working on new align
ments and security arrangements. As India combines its potential eco
nomic might with strategic might, its foreign policy will become
increasingly assertive. The nuclear tests were a dramatic statement of
India's rise as a great power on the cusp of a new century. Despite all
its problems, on the strength of present indicators, if India continues to
sustain an economic growth rate of 5 to 7 per cent per year, it is well set
on a course to become the fourth largest economy in the world in terms
of purchasing power parity after China, the United States and Japan;
the world's most populous country displacing China; the world's
largest market; Asia's third most formidable economic power after
China and Japan, and second military power after China; and poten
tially the world's fifth largest power in the coming decades.

Sino-Indian Rivalry: A New Cold War?

Of all the world powers, China ? India's giant Asian rival and the
rising superpower ? is most affected by India's nuclear capability in
the long run even as it tries to make diplomatic gains in the short run.
The demonstration of India's nuclear capability has shifted the delicate
balance of power in Asia. A resurgent India will face a rising China
which will ensure a conflict of interests between the two giants. China
says it will never allow India entry into the N-club because it does not
wish to lose its status as Asia's sole nuclear weapons state.29 But for
New Delhi, China asking India to give up its nuclear weapons is like
Casanova extolling the virtues of abstinence or the devil quoting the
scriptures. What has particularly incensed China is that India is trying
to pass itself off as a nuclear counterweight to China while depicting
China as a potential enemy. India's attempt to emerge as a nuclear

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 211

power and become an important element in the Asian balance of power

is unacceptable to China.30 Asymmetry in international status and
power in Sino-Indian relations has served Beijing's interests well. Any
attempts by India to challenge or undermine China's power and influ
ence or achieve strategic parity will be strongly resisted by China. The
Chinese are keen to work out a common strategy with the United States
and others to force India to disarm in order to make the Asia-Pacific
safe for joint U.S.-Chinese hegemony in the twenty-first century. No
matter what Jiang Zemin tells Bill Clinton regarding non-proliferation,
China's Pakistan connection will be strengthened in the future. Beijing
perceives "India to be an ambitious, over-confident, yet militarily pow
erful neighbour with whom it may eventually have to have a day of
reckoning".31
And if China is seen as entering into anti-India alliances, New
Delhi will have less inhibitions about joining anti-China forces, espe
cially in the U.S. Congress, and stir up some latent ones in the region.
Nor will the collusion between Beijing and Islamabad go unanswered.32
In a tit for tat, when China and Pakistan signed a nuclear co-operation
deal in 1989, India responded by agreeing to help China's arch-rival in
Southeast Asia, Vietnam, with its nuclear energy programme for peace
ful purposes. One wonders if New Delhi will now raise the ante by
providing nuclear and missile technology to China's perceived enemies
? Vietnam, Taiwan and Mongolia ?with all the potentially destabilizing
consequences for regional security. And if China backs Pakistan's stand
on Kashmir, India could play the Tibet card. India's China experts
believe that its China policy has failed primarily because New Delhi
has not sought to build leverage against China. That is likely to change
in the future. An indication of India's new hardline China policy was
given in a recent commentary by one BJP ideologue:

Right now Beijing and official USA are busy wooing ? and arming ?
Pakistan against India. They have been doing so for decades. And
they are not likely to succeed any better now than they have before
... If A-bomb is good for China, why is it not good for India? If Beijing
thinks it can keep India down by joining hands with the US, it is
sadly mistaken. The US is more apprehensive of an expansionist
China
33
than of a resurgent India. If China can play games, so can India

In short, a contest between China and India over control and

domination of South, Southeast and Central Asia, and the northern
Indian Ocean (Malacca Strait) will be the dominant feature of Asian
geopolitics in the twenty-first century. The power rivalry between the
two Asian giants, and their self-image as natural great powers and

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212 /. Mohan Malik

centres of civilization and culture, will continue to drive them to

support different countries and causes. Both remain suspicious of each
other's long-term agenda and intentions, and both see themselves as
newly rising great Asian powers whose time has finally come. Much as
India would like to keep its definition as an independent power pick
ing and choosing its own friends, China's grand strategy, especially
Beijing's choice of allies to achieve its strategic goals, will push India
into a coalition of anti-China states.

The Changing Balance of Power

At a time of worsening economic crisis in Asia, the relative weakening
of Japan, and tensions and turmoil in Southeast Asia, the regional
balance of power seems to be moving fast in the bipolar direction once
again: the United States versus China. The Clinton Administration's
policy of accommodating China is based on the premise that U.S.
power alone would be adequate to contain China's rising influence and
role in Asia. Many Asians, however, suspect that the new-found Sino
American partnership could come at the cost of U.S. relations with
Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and India, and that the Sino-U.S. engagement
could in fact be the beginning of U.S. disengagement from the region.
As China's power grows, Washington will find balancing Beijing
increasingly difficult. Already, the dependence of developed econo
mies for trade and investment in big emerging markets like China is
leading to a gradual loss of Western leverage over them. For example,
the United States is incapable of imposing tough economic sanctions
on China despite Beijing's violation of human rights, trade rights and
transfer of weapons of mass destruction. Growing trade dependence
between China and the United States is thus limiting or constraining
U.S. foreign policy options ? a condition which may be called the
"paradox of reverse leverage" ? which has a coercive effect on defence
and security planning. Similarly, pro-market reforms since 1991 have
armed India with an economic weapon it can wield to beat back U.S.
pressure on nuclear proliferation.
China's drive to become a great economic and military power is
the most important challenge facing the Asia-Pacific region. An exclu
sive Sino-U.S. bipolar framework at the expense of a stable balance of
power among the United States, Japan, Russia, China and India may not
serve long-term U.S. national interests. The Sino-U.S. rhetoric about a
"new strategic partnership in the 21st century" notwithstanding, the
United States and China will remain strategic competitors. China's
ultimate objective is to limit and dilute the U.S. ability to impact
adversely on China's interests and influence and eventually displace
U.S. power in the Asia-Pacific. The key motive behind China's assist

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 213

ance to countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan is
to countervail the United States and to establish a balance of power
favourable to its national interests. Until recently, China was an inter
national spoiler and regional trouble-maker, but today it is being co
opted by the United States as a partner for peace and stability in Asia.
It is interesting to note how China has put in considerable efforts to try
to convince the world that it is a responsible country and that it ought
to be rewarded with concessions on Taiwan, World Trade Organization
membership, and U.S. transfers of high-technology.34
But the facts speak otherwise. Just as China's devaluation of the
yuan in 1994 ultimately led to the financial crisis in Asia, China's
transfers of nuclear and missile technologies led to the nuclear arms
race in the Indian subcontinent. Far from being a "regional stabilizer",
Beijing has thus played a key role in triggering Asia's nuclear and
economic crises. In the next decade or so, China is likely to continue to
strike a hard bargain with the United States through the use of its
established leverages of nuclear and missile exports and economic
advantages while upgrading its strategic capabilities slowly and subtly
without causing alarm in the region. In the long run, therefore, it may
not be a wise policy for Washington to put all its eggs in the China
basket. With the strategic equalizer India has with China, the power
balance in the region is now more equitable. And should a new Cold
War break out in the future between China and the United States, as
predicted in Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro's "The Coming Con
flict with America",35 India might come to occupy the same place in the
U.S. security calculus that China had during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War
years from 1971 to 1989. India could also play the main role of a
balancer in the south of the Eurasian heartland.
A polycentric balance of power in Asia (United States-China
Russia-Japan-India) would provide maximum manoeuvrability to small
and middle powers compared with a bipolar U.S.-China balance of
power which could force the Asia-Pacific countries to take sides. From
the regional security point of view, therefore, India could provide an
effective economic and military counterweight to China's growing eco
nomic and military might in Asia. As noted earlier, China is the party
worst affected by this qualitative change in Asia's strategic balance*.
Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future, no Asian country, particularly
the ASEAN member-states, will endorse India's nuclear stance as it
undermines the existing nuclear order to which all countries in the
region subscribe and their efforts to create a Southeast Asian Nuclear
Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ).36
In conclusion, while India's nuclear tests have upset the existing
strategic equilibrium and the central nuclear balance of power among

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214 /. Mohan Malik

the great powers, they have also changed the Asian security environ
ment by demonstrating India's military capability in relation to China,
Japan, Russia, and the United States. Deplorable as the tests were, but
just as Pakistan's nuclear tests restored the strategic balance on the
Indian subcontinent, India's nuclear weapons could restore the balance
of power on the Asian mainland by thwarting China's aspirations for
hegemony of the Asia-Pacific in the long run. However, this would be
possible only if the China-India-Pakistan nuclear arms race does not
spiral out of control and their competition is kept within manageable
limits.

NOTES
1. J.N. Dixit, "Why India's Bomb is Justified", Asiaweek, 29 May 1998, p. 7.
2. Malcolm Fraser, "Nuclear jolt rooted in test-ban treaty", Australian, 4 June 1998,
p. 11; and Ramesh Thakur, "India was wrong to test, but what can the world do?",
International Herald Tribune [hereafter cited as IHT\, 19 May 1998.
3. The discussion here is based on J. Mohan Malik, "China-India Relations in the Post
Soviet Era: The Continuing Rivalry", China Quarterly, no. .142 (June 1995),
pp. 317-55; J. Mohan Malik, "China Policy Towards Nuclear Arms Control: Post
Cold War Era", Contemporary Security Policy 16, no. 2 (August 1995): 1-43.
4. Jasjit Singh, "Indian Security: A Framework for National Strategy", Strategic Analy
sis, November 1987, p. 898. "For India, China is a key reference point, and Asia the
appropriate geo-political context", writes Sujit Dutta in "India's Evolving Relations
with China", Strategic Analysis, July 1995, p. 483.
5. Arati R. Jerath, "Govt flashes China card at the West", Indian Express, 14 May 1998,
p. 1.
6. David Lague, "Beijing blames New Delhi for tension", Sunday Age, 31 May 1998,
p. 13.
7. Sanjeev Miglani, "New Delhi puts its China cards on the table", Asia Times
[Bangkok], 29 April 1997; "India complains over Pakistan-China links", Australian,
16 December 1991, p. 7; and "Pakistan Secretly Building Missile Factory with
Chinese Help: Report", Asian Defence Journal, October 1996, p. 88.
8. In China's calculations, faced with two or three regional crises, the United States
would have to choose which one is more important for its national interests,
leaving the other to China to sort out.
9. South China Morning Post [hereafter cited as SCMP], 9 March 1993, p. 10; and
Mohan Malik, "Burma slides under China's shadow", Jane's Intelligence Review
9, no. 6 (July 1997): 320-25.
10. Yossef Bodansky, "PRC Revives Military Threat to Taiwan as a Prelude to Wider
Expansion", Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, July-August 1995, p. 11.
11. "Beijing soothes generals by spending big on defence", Weekend Australian,
8-9 March 1997, p. 7.
12. A banned Chinese book authored by a serving PLA official saw the United States,
India, Vietnam and Taiwan as potential military enemies. See Weekend Australian,
20-21 November 1993, p. 16.
13. Dinesh Kumar, "India's threat perceptions: The Sino-Pakistan nexus", Times of
India, 18 May 1998, p. 1. Italics added.
14. Apparently, this was based on the understanding or assumption in Washington that
given a free rein in South and Southeast Asia, Beijing would do nothing to chal

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India Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications 215

lenge or undermine the United States and its allies' interests in the Pacific, particu
larly in Northeast Asia. Many serving and retired State Department and Pentagon
officials believe that China sees South and Southeast Asia as its legitimate sphere
of influence in the same way as the Americans see Latin America as their sphere of
influence.
15. The discussion here is based on conversations with India's China experts and
defence analysts. See also Editorial, "Eagle and Dragon", Times of India, 15 June
1998, p. 6.
16. C. Raja Mohan, "Nuclear Balance in Asia", The Hindu, 11 June 1998, p. 10.
17. Charles Krauthammer, "Clinton's China Grovel", Washington Post, 5 June 1998,
p. A31.
18. Kenneth J. Cooper, "India's Atomic Tests Revive Old Fears", IHT, 12 May 1998,
p. 1.
19. Saeed Naqvi, "Before the sun sets on US hegemony", Indian Express, 26 June 1998,
p. 6.
20. Philip Bowring, "But Why Shouldn't a Democracy Be Armed to Defend Itself?",
IHT, 13 May 1998.
21. "Security: The race is on", Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 June 1998, p. 22.
22. Raj Chengappa and Manoj Joshi, "Hawkish India", India Today, 1 June 1998, p. 12.
23. John Pomfret, "China's Response to India Could Boost Its Reputation", Washington
Post, 15 May 1998, p. A33.
24. Hu Guangyao and Hu Xiaoming, "Nuclear Tests Threaten Stability", and "China's
Statement on India's Nuclear Tests", Beijing Review, 1-7 June 1998, p. 7.
25. C. Raja Mohan, "China and the Indian bomb", The Hindu, 18 May 1998, p. 13;
"India Blasts China-US Summit Call on South Asia", Reuters, 28 June 1998 (see
http://www.RH998063001623.html)
26. Chengappa and Joshi, "Hawkish India", p. 10.
27. John Diamond, "Pakistan Could Sell Nuclear Secrets", IHT, 19 June 1988.
28. C. Mahapatra, "US winking at Chinese arms sales forced India's hand", Rediff On
The Net, 15 May 1998 (http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/may/15bomb.htm)
29. However, China has no one to blame but itself for losing its status as the sole NWS
in Asia. Beijing now realizes that it may have overplayed "the Pakistan card" in its
relations with India. China has also come out openly against India's membership of
the U.N. Security Council. See China Daily, 2 June 1998, p. 1.
30. C. Raja Mohan, "China takes the hard line", The Hindu, 4 June 1998, p. 11; and
K. J. Cooper and S. Mufson, "Nuclear Cloud Is Cast Over India's Relations With
China", Washington Post, 1 June 1998, p. A14.
31. Gary Klintworth, "Chinese Perspectives on India as a Great Power", in India's
Strategic Future: Regional State or Global Power?, edited by Ross Babbage and
Sandy Gordon (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 96.
32. Chengappa and Joshi, "Hawkish India", pp. 10-15.
33. K.R. Malkani, "India, China & the Bomb", Hindustan Times, 3 June 1998, p. 7.
34. D. Shambaugh, "China Has Made An Effort and Now Wants Its Reward", IHT,
10 June 1998.
35. See Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, "China I: The Coming Conflict with
America", Foreign Affairs 76, no. 2 (March/April 1997): 18-32.
36. C. Raja Mohan, "Restoring the Asian Balance", The Hindu, 17 June 1998, p. 13.

J. Mohan Maltx is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Defence Studies

Programme at Deakin University's Geelong campus, Victoria, Australia.

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