India's decision to conduct five nuclear tests has occasioned as much celebration in India as it has engendered condemnation around the world. For many in the international community, the decision exemplifies India's misplaced sense of priorities. Its attempt to secure great-power status without attending to the surer foundations of economic well-being appears misguided. For others, this decision represents a decisive break with the best moral intimations bequeathed by Gandhi and Nehru, who, for all their failings, articu-lated an idealism that now seems to have vanished. These considerations ought not to be taken lightly. But to condemn India's decision without condemning the circumstances that led to it is to engage in the same politics of bad faith that has rendered American criticisms of India's actions less credible. It is to hold India to stan-dards that none of those who judge it has upheld.
India's security dilemmas are acute. To its north lies China, a formidable adversary with which India fought a humiliating war in 1962. To its west lies Pakistan, with which India fought three wars in the first 25 years of its independence. China's nuclear arsenal has a command-ing presence in the region, and Pakistan has developed a substantial nuclear and missile program with China's assistance. Given the balance-of-power considerations, the surprise is not that these tests occurred but that it took so long for them to occur. India's strategic situation was made more ignominious by the fact that the American abdication of any principles in its stand on China seemed to justify the view that might makes right in international politics. It's a matter for regret that India's restraint on the nuclear issue meant that the world turned a blind eye to India's strategic realities. India is now equal to the five declared nuclear powers in at least one respect: It is acting upon the kind of strategic considerations that they themselves have long acted upon.
But, while the strategic and technical considerations that went into this decision have long been in the mak-ing, the current tests were directed as much at a domestic as an international audience. The major party in the ruling coalition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had openly declared its intentions to make India into a nuclear power. Since assuming office, this government has been struggling to find its feet. On the one hand, its concerted attempts to portray itself as a moderate party left it without a clear ideological direction. On the other hand, the political brinkmanship of many of its coalition partners seems to pull the government in many different directions at once. In such circumstances, the nuclear tests have, temporarily at any rate, given the gov-ernment an aura of credibility and decisiveness. It is difficult to think of any decision in India's recent history that has had such overwhelming public support.
The extent of this support extends far beyond the par-tisans of Hindu nationalism narrowly understood. There is little doubt that these tests would not have been tech-nically feasible unless previous governments had laid the groundwork. But, while India had long ago compro-mised the idealism of the early days of its leadership of the nonaligned movement, none of its previous governments had been able to jettison entirely the high moral-ism that was bequeathed to the state by Gandhi and Nehru. The BJP has, in this respect, more expressly articulated the desire for a nuclear deterrent that many Indi-ans had long felt but never quite owned up to.
For all of India's strategic conundrums, this desire is motivated less by strategic concerns than by psychological ones. The last two decades have been trying ones for India. A spate of secessionist movements, a widespread sense of its declining importance in world affairs, and a realization that many of its highest hopes remain unredeemed have underscored India's insecurities and vul-nerabilities. With two of the pillars of India's self-image since independence-its state-led mixed economy and its central role in the nonaligned movement-appear-ing increasingly irrelevant in light of the vicissitudes of world politics, India has been struggling to redefine itself. Economic reforms carried out in the early '90s have brought a new vibrancy to certain sectors of the economy, but these have yet to be translated into enduring gains that all can share. Despite the fact that its democracy remains the repository of immense hopes, its institutions often appear overburdened and ineffective in the face of the overwhelming tasks confronting them. The uncertainties of its emerging economic and political landscape have contributed to a palpable, if quiet, crisis of confidence. Thus, though the tests are not, in any sense, a shortcut to fulfilling India's best aspirations, they have boosted its flagging morale.Accordingly, public opinion in India in the aftermath of the tests has focused less on their strategic ramifications than on the considerable scientific and organizational achievement that the tests represent.
What will be the consequences of these tests? Both internationally and domestically, the contingencies of politics will determine the outcome rather than an overall logic of his-tory or economics. There is no doubt that these tests have consolidated support for the BJP. For those who worry that this party's coopting of Indian nationalism has perilously exacerbated India's practical predica-ments, this ought to be a matter of grave concern.
But there are significant silver linings. The most curious fact about public opinion in India in the aftermath of the tests is that Pakistan has hardly figured in the dis-cussion at all. In part, this is the result of attempts by the government to portray China as India's main adversary and competitor. But it is also consistent with the thesis that these tests are less a product of India's past obses-sions with Pakistan than they are a product of its current desire to demonstrate to itself that it is still capable of a complex organized endeavor. India's political elite needed to show that, despite the fragmentation of its politics, it is capable of uniting behind a national project. To be sure, any adversarial relationships in interna-tional politics should be avoided, so India's sparring with China and diplomatic war with the United States are certainly a cause for lament. Nonetheless, whatever the strategic imperatives, the less Pakistan remains in the public consciousness in India, the healthier it will be for Indian politics, and especially for Indian Muslims. It is undeniable that there are factions allied with the rul-ing BJP whose history of baiting Muslims ought to remain a matter of grave concern, but, to the extent that this display of nationalism has not been immediately and narrowly directed against Pakistan, there is cause for hope.
Much will depend on how the government chooses to translate its newfound credibility into legislative gains. In some quarters, American sanctions may be used as an argument for the virtues of an economic autarky that makes India less dependent on the vagaries of world opinion. But, in recent days, the Indian government has granted significant mineral and oil exploration rights to foreign companies, including American ones. The decision to open what were among the most protected sectors of the Indian economy represents an amazing volte-face for a ruling party that had earlier proclaimed allegiance to swadeshi, or economic nation-alism. Having acquired impeccable nationalist credentials, the BJP is in a position-in the way that only Nixon could go to China-to liberalize the economy further than its predecessors did. Whether it succeeds will depend on its capacities for deft political maneuvering, but it certainly appears willing to move in that direction.
As for India's loss of credibility internationally, this has been significantly offset by the failure of the G-8 nations to agree on economic sanctions. The United States seems only slightly less isolated on this issue than India was on its decision to conduct the tests. In any event, foreign aid does not contribute significantly to the Indian economy, and American opposition to loans to India from financial institutions does not have many immediate consequences. The effects of sanctions on investor confidence remain to be seen, though they too do not yet appear significant.
Whatever India's intentions, the pressure on Pakistan to conduct its own nuclear tests is immense, although Pakistan is more vulnerable to sanctions than India. It is not unlikely that both India and Pakistan-after conducting its own tests-will join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Two considerations may be decisive. One will be the extent to which Indian scientists feel that they have enough data for their computer simulations to make further tests unnecessary; the second will be the ability of the Indian government to present acces-sion to the treaty as a political triumph rather than a capitulation.
Will India's tests affect proliferation in other nations? The countries that had strategic reasons to acquire such weapons had them independently of India's nuclear tests, and the direct bearing of these events on their desire to procure nuclear weapons is less than clear.
India has no interests or incentives to aid in further pro-liferation, and nor does, in the final analysis, Pakistan. It's plausible that underlying American anxiety about these tests owes less to the fact that India conducted them than that Pakistan, if it conducts some in response, may be more amenable to sharing its know-how with other powers in the Middle East. This fear is groundless. And fears of a new arms race in South Asia are also too alarmist for the simple reason that one is already underway. India's tests represent one step in an ongoing process and do not necessarily signify a sudden expansion of military budgets. And if, as there is some evidence to suggest, the logic of nuclear deterrence makes a conventional war less likely, it may not necessarily prove more burdensome than current defense expenditures already are.
One of the sadder truths of modern diplomatic his-tory has been the way U.S. policies on South Asia have been governed by a curious combination of indifference and contempt. The tone of the American response to India's tests leaves it unclear whether what the U.S. most objects to is the fact that the tests occurred or that they've revealed the limits of the United States' ability to get its way. Sanctions will only serve to fuel India's per-ception that the United States will punish India for far less than what it excuses in China. If the United States wants to play the role of honest broker, it will have to recognize that the coin of exchange in the politics of South Asia is much the same as it is the world over: the quest for national self-esteem.
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